(Reuters) - An Oregon man pleaded guilty on Friday to being an accessory after the fact for helping people linked to a suicide bomb attack on the headquarters of Pakistan's intelligence service in 2009 that killed about 30 people, court records showed. Reaz Qadir Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Portland, admitted in a plea entered in U.S. District Court that he provided advice and financial aid to the suicide bomber's Maldives-based wives following the attack, knowing that such assistance would hinder and prevent their capture. Khan, a 51-year-old wastewater treatment plant operator and married father-of-three originally from Pakistan, was arrested in 2013 on an indictment which accused him of using email and intermediaries to consult with and provide financial support to the Maldivian bomber, Ali Jaleel, and his family. The indictment said the conspiracy began in 2005 and continued on through the May 27, 2009, attack on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence headquarters in Lahore and into the following month.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Federal prosecutors say a former Wells Fargo Securities investment banker, his stockbroker friend and a network of friends and family were sentenced to prison after using insider information to pocket $11 million.

DENVER (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded more than 300 Enstrom helicopters nationwide until they can be inspected for possible cracks like the one that may have caused a crash last month that killed two people in Colorado.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Five conservation groups that contend federal officials in Idaho are violating environmental laws by killing wolves, coyotes and other wildlife to protect livestock and crops have filed a federal lawsuit.

By Jonathan Kaminsky NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Two people were killed in a shooting during a popular parade in New Orleans, police said on Friday, in an event shaking the city as it prepares for additional revelry culminating in Mardi Gras on Tuesday. The shooting comes as officials have stepped up efforts to fight violent crime in the city. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu commended the police department for acting swiftly to apprehend the suspect, identified as John Hicks, 19. "We've seen this iteration of violence before, where young men get in an argument over something that's seemingly not worth it." New Orleans has long been plagued by a murder rate among the highest in the United States, though the number of killings dropped sharply in 2013 and moderately in 2014 to a total of 150, according to city figures.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The only flight service to a remote Alaska island village has been cut off for three weeks because a designated helicopter was sidelined by maintenance work, but the service provider said Friday the aircraft is expected to be returned to service Saturday.

By Colleen Jenkins WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday described the deaths of three young Muslims gunned down in North Carolina this week as "brutal and outrageous murders" and said no one in the United States should be targeted for their religion. The president's statement came as the U.S. Justice Department said it would join the FBI's preliminary inquiry to determine whether the man accused in the Chapel Hill shooting on Tuesday broke any federal laws, including hate crime laws. The families had called on Obama to insist that federal authorities investigate whether the murder suspect, 46-year-old paralegal student Craig Stephen Hicks, was motivated by hatred toward the victims because they were Muslim. Newlywed Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, a University of North Carolina dental student, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, a student at North Carolina State University, were killed in a condominium about two miles (three km) from the UNC campus.

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP) — A woman convicted along with her husband of killing a prep school teacher in 2012 after they decided "to get a girl" was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former U.S. soldier accused of recruiting an international team of military-trained snipers to carry out contract killings for a drug cartel pleaded guilty in New York federal court on Friday. Joseph Manuel Hunter, 49, who prosecutors said was known as "Rambo," faces between 10 years and life in prison when he is sentenced in May for conspiring to murder a law enforcement officer and two other charges. Hunter, thinking of his family, decided to avoid a trial scheduled for March 9 despite believing the government unlawfully entrapped him, his defense lawyer Marlon Kirton said after Friday's hearing. Hunter, who served as a sniper instructor in the U.S. Army, is the fourth defendant to plead guilty after former U.S. Army Sergeant Timothy Vamvakias, former German sniper Dennis Gogel and former Polish sniper Slawomir Soborski.

A married same-sex couple on Friday asked a federal court to force Indiana state and county officials to name both of the women as parents on their newborn son's birth certificate. Ashlee and Ruby Henderson were married in November in Indiana and Ruby Henderson gave birth in December to a son through artificial insemination, but state and local officials have refused to list both as parents on his birth certificate. Tippecanoe Department of Health officials told the Lafayette couple it would take a court order to list Ashlee Henderson as a parent on the birth certificate, the couple said in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in southern Indiana.

WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) — A team of police officers and government agents surrounded a house early Friday and arrested a man they suspect killed three people and injured three others in a barbershop shooting last week, officials said.

Officials in 24 Alabama counties began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Friday, gay rights advocates said, a day after a U.S. judge ordered one local official to issue licenses to gay couples in accordance with an earlier ruling. The shift means that a majority of Alabama counties are now granting licenses to same-sex couples. It also indicates that defiance to a federal ruling striking down the state's gay marriage ban is weakening, as fewer local judges follow a contravening order from the chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court. "These numbers represent a seismic shift in favor of equality and justice," said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, in a statement.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — In a state where tobacco interests once had a firm grip on the levers of politics, the Kentucky House of Representatives on Friday passed a ban on smoking in workplaces and indoor public places.